North Carolina’s numbers continue to look exceptionally strong for Obama this year. Turnout is up across the board, but Democrats have taken the lion’s share, seeing a 120% increase on the 2004 turnout figure. The Republican increase is closer to 80%.

The dashed lines on the right graph indicate the 2004 total early turnout for each party.

The age graphs show the same trend as we found last week: a broadly normal distribution (bell curve), with small peaks at the youngest end. The mean ages are a little lower than in Florida (about 5 years), but that’s probably to be expected given the demographic differences between the two states.

The graph for non-affiliated voters is notably different, displaying a much flatter distribution (no clear peaks or dips). It’s worth keeping in mind that this probably has more to do with the rise of independent status amongst young voters than with any great disparity in turnout. In North Carolina, while those aged over 40 overwhelmingly identify as Democrats or Republicans, the ‘under 40’ demographic is fairly equally split among Democrat, Republican and Unaffiliated. I’ll try to post some further analysis of this issue.

The Early Voting Information Center

We are a non-partisan academic research center based at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

Professor Paul Gronke and his team conduct research on early voting and election reform, predominantly in the United States. In addition to our scholarly research, we have worked on projects with the Pew Center on the States, the Federal Election Assistance Commission, the Center for American Progress and a number of state and local elections offices.

The Early Voting Information Center is proud to have co-hosted the inaugural Election Sciences, Reform, and Administration Conference in July of 2017. More information can be found on the conference website.

Professor Gronke's academic credentials--including his curriculum vita, courses taught, and other research papers--can be found at his personal Reed web page.